ANAT: News #36

1999 National Summer School
in Art and Science

14 artists from across Australia participated in the 1999 National Summer School in Science and Art, coordinated by ANAT at Metro Screen, Sydney, NSW, 11 - 29 January, 1999.

The National Summer School is a crucial aspect of ANAT's objective to advocate and promote artists' interaction with art, technology and science. The Summer School remains unique in Australia, in that it is still the only intensive training program designed specifically for artists. This year ANAT are very proud to celebrate the tenth anniversary of this prestigious training program.

The Tenth National Summer School addressed the interaction between art and science. As readers of the newsletter know, during 1998 ANAT undertook research and investigation into this area, through a focus, entitled, scientific serendipity, which provided the framework for a number of our key programs, including the development of projects and commissions which directly engage with science technologies, techniques, and discourses. To culminate this, the 1999 National Summer School focussed on diverse science and technology practices, and how science and art can collaborate. The school investigated the discrete discourses surrounding sciences and media arts and encouraged the generation of unexpected and alchemic outcomes.

Over the intensive (and somewhat exhausting) three week duration of the school, participants gained access to skills in a diversity of areas, such as scientific visualisation techniques and software, computer programming and modelling languages, sound, visual and web-based computer media, evolutionary approaches to computer programming, cognitive science and philosophy of mind. Because of the scope and breadth of the science focus, ANAT engaged a range of different tutors for this year's school, attempting to create specialised workshop situations, as well as the more traditional masterclass learning environment. The artists were exposed to expert tutelage by some of Australia's leading science and art practitioners, including, John Tonkin, Mr Snow, Horst Kiechle, Dennis Wilcox, Justine Cooper, Paul Brown, Sophea Lerner, Andrew Lyons, Suzanne Buljan, Stephen Jones, Ben Simons, Derek Kreckler, and Metro's Digital Media Manager, Brad Miller (whose herculean efforts ensured that the technical coordination of the school was a resounding success). As well as the intensive program at Metro, the artists also participated in workshops at Sydney's Vislab facilities, and contextualised their training with excursions, studio visits and outings to performances and radio shows by Triclops International, Gravity Feed, Skadada, and Zina Kaye.

To culturally contextualise the school, a satellite event, entitled anamorphosis, combined a forum with an open day of the school, giving the public and media an opportunity to view the work-in-progress produced by the students. This gala event, held at the Chauvel Cinema in Paddington, Sydney, showcased not only the innovations of the artists participating in the school, but also the work of several key artists engaged with science practices. The evening combined a series of artists' presentations, with a forum to exchange ideas and experiences of the summer school participants.

Beginning the artists talks with an introduction to the concepts of anamorphic distortion, keynote speaker, Paula Dawson, internationally renowned holographic artist, contextualised the science focus of the Summer School within the framework of her own practice. She made reference to the skills she developed as a participant of the Summer School in 1990, and expanded on forthcoming plans for the artwork she began developing during that school. Greenworld is a holographic work which Paula intends to site directly on the Tropic of Capricorn, near the Great Barrier Reef. At this precise point, at specific times of the year, viewers will be able to see a holographic image by the light of the full moon, superimposed on to the ocean.
http://www.vislab.usyd.edu.au/gallery/paula/greenworld/

Sydney based artist, and participant of this year's school, Rodney Berry discussed his artificial ecology, Feeping Creatures, an art project using principals drawn from artificial life research (see scientific serendipity notices section, ANAT Newsletter #35). Rodney discussed how the ecology, which is based on a Silicon Graphics O2 workstation, generates music and graphics through the evolution and behaviours of synthetic organisms. Each creature produces a series of musical notes which remain unchanged throughout its life, while rhythmic material evolves when creatures eat plants (or other creatures) or devolves through starvation, and ageing. Rodney Berry writes more about Feeping Creatures in his conference report later in the newsletter.

Yonat Zurr and Oron Catts, artists from Perth, discussed the Tissue Culture and Art research project. Yonat, who was also a participant of this year's school, and Oron have been selected as ANAT's first deep immersion: scientific serendipity artists in residence.
http://www.imago.com.au/tca/

Following the artists' presentations, ANAT's 1999 program of activities were officially launched by Stelarc, one of Australia's most internationally well recognised performance artists. Stelarc discussed how his work has evolved since attending a National Summer School in 1990, noting that the school gave him a crucial opportunity to develop and visualise his acclaimed Third Arm project on CAD software technology. Stelarc also discussed his forthcoming presentation in Sydney (see notices), which will outline his new projects, the Extra Ear, a surgically constructed ear which can operate as an Internet antenna the Exoskeleton, a pneumatically powered six-legged walking machine actuated by arm gestures and Movatar, an inverse motion capture system enabling avatars to access physical bodies.

anamorphosis also gave the public and media an opportunity to view work-in-progress by the participants of this year's school. A CDROM documenting the diverse history of the ANAT National Summer Schools, produced on behalf on ANAT by Sydney artist, Lloyd Sharp, was also available for viewing.

In a vivid example of the cultural significance of the National Summer School, the participants of the 1997 Summer School have continued to work together under the collective name, nervous_objects, receiving critical acclaim for their networked synaesthetic environments. Following the formal proceedings of anamorphosis, the audience was invited to the digital media lab at Metro for a presentation of nervous_objects current work-in-progress. Live from the remote location of Pekina, a small town in the wheat belt of Central South Australia, the artists presented a broadcast of their online, environment-driven, spatial narrative, terra_nova.
http://no.va.com.au/terra

The artists attending the 1999 National Summer School were:

Rodney Berry, Sydney, NSW

Liz Hughes, Sydney, NSW

Geni Weight, Adelaide, SA

Melinda Burgess, Werri Beach, NSW

Solange Kershaw, Sydney, NSW

Jordan Wynnychuk, Melbourne, VIC

Lea Collins, Canberra, ACT

Gordon Monro, Sydney, NSW

Yonat Zurr, Perth WA

Adam Donovan, Brisbane, QLD

Stephen Poljansek, Hobart, TAS

Jeremy Yuille, Brisbane, QLD

Chris Fortescue, Sydney, NSW

Rea, Sydney, NSW

The National Summer School was supported by: the Federal Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body the Queensland Government's Office of Arts and Cultural Development through Queensland Artworkers Alliance the New South Wales Film and Television Office and the Minister for Education and the Arts through Arts Tasmania. This year's School also received support from Metro Screen, the University of Sydney's Vislab, and the University of New South Wales' College of Fine Arts.
Stelarc's attendance at anamorphosis was assisted by dLux media arts and the Casula Powerhouse.